We wake up at about 6:45, and our school called Port Ellen Primary School, starts at 9:00am. We have a break in the morning to let everyone get fresh air, but if it’s raining we play games inside. Once we get in, our teacher called Mrs Clark calls out the register. We all have water bottles and we get our lunch at school for £2.00! On a Monday morning, everyone in the school, comes and has a meeting to talk about everything on at school, during the week. After the meeting we go up to our classes and have a check-up. Our homework is to copy out 10 spelling words and write 5 sentences about them. We have our first break at 10:30am and for break we go outside and classes take turn to play on our ‘all-weather-pitch’. After break we do maths and one of the things we do is, play a game called ‘fizz buzz’, to play you need a ball and you pass the ball around, you say fizz is its a multiple of 5 and buzz if its a multiple of 3 and if its not you just say the number. We play that for 5-10 minutes. Our lunchtime is at 12:00 and we are aloud to go home for lunch but we have to be back for 1:00pm! In the afternoon we get out the computers out and go on and write blogs on glow. We have an afternoon break at 2:15 till 2:30 and when we come back in we learn the history of slavery. We go home at 3:30, I have my dinner at 5:30pm and go to bed at 9:30pm!

On the 8th and 9th September 2012 the book festival is coming to Port Ellen Primary School. The book festival will have many authors including Liz Lochhead, Joan Lennon, Keith Brumpton,Vivian French and Linda Strachan. To book go to www.islaybookfestival.com. The doors open at 10:00am on Saturday and 10:30am on Sunday.

Every Thursday after school every one in the choir go to the hall for practice. On Saturday 2nd June all of the choir went to Bowmore to the local mod. They sang the unison, unison 2, strathspey, reel and the peurt a ‘beul. They came first for the unison and second for the strathspey and reel. They won two trophies, one for the Psalm and the other trophy was for their unison. The choir said “Yeah we came first!” Then Mrs Macdonald the conductor said “We won.” They all had fun.

As we are the first school to be the focus of the quadblogging this term, we thought we would tell you a little about ourselves.
Our school is in Scotland, part of the United kingdom, although there is a debate at the moment about Scotland becoming independent. We live on the Island of Islay, off the west coast of Scotland. We have lots of beaches, some hills and moors and the 4 main places to live are Port Ellen, Bowmore, Port Charlotte and Keills. The weather on Islay is usually windy and wet and we have lots of powercuts, but we have lots of lovely wildlife. You can get to Islay using a plane or the ferry, the ferry journey takes about 2 hours. About 3,000 people live on Islay.
We live in Port Ellen, a village and a port. People in the village work on the land, in the whisky distilleries and fish in the sea. There are 8 distilleries on Islay. Port Ellen has playing fields, a small supermarket and 4 other shops.
Our school has 2 levels, and 6 classrooms, as well as a school hall, staffroom, office and outside playgrounds. We have an all weather pitch, raised beds, a pond, a timber trail and a roundhouse. There are 64 children in the school, and 22 in nursery. There are 4 classes and nursery.Comments from pupils in Primary 4/5: Oliver ‘There have been many battles in Scotland’, Alicia ‘ My favourite football team is Rangers, who play in Glasgow.’, Eleanor’ I have a lorry with my name on it that carries gravel and draff.’, Danni’ I like playing in the playground on the train.’

For the Islay book festival this year we had lots of visitors and authors. One was Ruth Rendell and another Allan Burnett, also John Fardell and Debbi Gliori. I went to see Allan Burnett and brought three books and got them all signed. I got to dress up as Columba again. I learned how to be an author and I love Allan Burnett’s books. Thank you to the Islay book festival.

LINK TO SCHOOL WEBSITE

Port Ellen Primary Learning Blog

Welcome to Our Learning Blog from Port Ellen Primary School, which aims to record and celebrate learning and achievement in our school. We are situated in a pretty fishing village on the Isle of Islay, off the West coast of Scotland. It is a lovely place to live in and learn in, and we hope you will enjoy reading our blog and maybe even leave a comment.